


Bleed Black

by dollylux



Series: Invisible Boy [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depersonalization Disorder, Depression, Disassociation, Homelessness, M/M, Stanford Era, Unrequited Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:49:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4383425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An interlude of Sam's time at Stanford. (Deleted scene from Two-Headed Boy.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bleed Black

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Exaggerated_Specificity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exaggerated_Specificity/gifts).



> I wrote this years ago, while I was writing Two-Headed Boy, and I waffled for a long time about its inclusion in the story. My editor finally suggested I leave it out, that it wasn't really essential to the plot and it slowed down the pace, something I agreed with completely, by the end. I've always felt very protective of this scene because it's very personal for me, and I'm still a little reluctant to put it out there. But it's been sitting in a folder for years, and today I decided fuck it, just post it. So here it is. I hope it's okay.
> 
> Title comes from the AFI song that comes as close to describing depersonalization disorder as I've ever seen, next to Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb."

Sam is homeless during the summer. Last summer had been harder, the first time and losing everything he’d come to depend on, more alone than he could ever have comprehended. 

This summer is easier. If only because he’s not quite so numb, maybe not as scared as he had been. The house he’s found to squat in is right on the edge of town, in a part that none of his friends had ever ventured into, wouldn’t dare. There’s no electricity, but Palo Alto doesn’t get so hot that he can’t stand it. He spends most of his days haunting bookstores and the library, stays and runs his fingers over books for so long that the tips of them feel raw. He reads entire books on the hottest days, a warm bottle of water tucked between his feet, hungry stomach gurgling relentlessly. 

In the evenings, he heads to the bars. Does what he’s always done, what he’s learned. Pool and cards on a careful rotation of establishments, the money providing him with enough to survive on, enough for crackers and pre-packaged sandwiches and toilet paper. He lugs his backpack with him everywhere, the one he’s had since he was twelve. Keeps it packed with a couple of filled notebooks, a secret picture of Dean, his dwindled CD collection, and his now-dead cell phone. He makes do with the clothes he’s wearing, washing them every few days and turning them inside out. Because who cares? Who’s around him? Who does he interact with?

Dad and Dean have changed their cell phone numbers. Sam knows because he’d tried to call them both back when school let out, when he had nowhere to go. During a moment of weakness. During a ten minute span when he thought, _maybe_. Maybe I can find them, meet up with them, for just a little bit. Spend a few days on the road, be close to Dean again. 

He’d mailed him the t-shirt back on the last day of school, sent it off to Bobby without a note, Dean’s name scrawled along with the mailing address on the label. Made sure it wasn’t clean, that it was thick with the scent of his sweat, of his dirty college boy body. He got off one night thinking about it, about Dean loving the smell of him. About how maybe Dean would lick it out of his armpits, off his hands, between his legs. 

But probably not.

\--

Depersonalization disorder.

Jennifer, his psychologist-in-training friend, had given him a name for it. A word to roll over in his mind when it creeps up dark behind him. The first of it had happened on the bus to Sioux Falls from Denver, and it hadn’t gone away. She said it happened sometimes because of anxiety, stress, and depression, and did he ever suffer from any of these?

He snorts now at the thought.

It’s the 4th of July. Sam’s been smelling grilling meat all day, and he’s starving. He has seven dollars to his name and he isn’t in a hurry to spend it. He’s sprawled out downstairs in this abandoned little house that he’s taken for his own for the summer, head tucked into a corner on his backpack. He stares at the ceiling, at the black mold creeping and spreading like it’s alive all over. 

Sometimes he can ignore it, this feeling. Sometimes, when he’s with friends, when he’s studying and focusing, when he’s listening to music in headphones. But even just the hint of it, like a whisper or a faint scent in the air, and it descends on him like it’s been starving for him, waiting for a weak moment to pounce. And it does. It consumes him. Devours him and pulls him up and up and up, until he’s detached from everything, all of it.

He used to panic. He used to start crying like a little kid, helpless and afraid in an ever-growing darkness. He used to hyperventilate and have to run and hide, lock doors and sink to the ground and try to make it go away, please, please just go away. But it never did, never left. Over time, he learned to accept it. Just stayed still and gave in. Let it wash over him, thick and dark as a black hole, drowning him.

It’s so much that no other feeling can touch him from here. Loneliness, that ever-present need to hurt himself, to dig at his skin with something, anything. Jennifer had asked if he knew what caused it, and he’d closed up so tight so fast that she’d been almost shocked. What he did answer though, or try to answer, is what it feels like.

“It feels like when your leg falls asleep. Not the sensation of your leg falling asleep, but the sensation of touching your own leg while it’s asleep. No, not the sharp tingles, the other part. The dull feeling of being touched but it’s not complete. Not a real sensation because your nerves are all fucked up, all disconnected from communication with the brain, right? It’s like touching your leg with your hand, from the leg’s point of view.”

He’d felt stupid, fidgeted and looked away from her and searched his pot-addled mind for a better way to explain it.

“It’s the feeling you have in a dream. Or observing a dream, really. It’s happening, but you’re outside of it. Nothing can touch you. But you’re aware of it, aware that it’s weird, that it’s different than normal. And you try to place it, to find it and make it go away, but that just draws attention to it. Makes it more powerful, makes it bigger and bigger. And if you freak out, that just makes it even bigger, like it’s smothering you. So you just have to deal with it and let it in. Just let it happen and live in it. Living in it is so much easier than trying to fight it.”

She’d said it would probably go away, eventually. A year and a half later, he’s still here, right in the middle of it. It’s not comforting or familiar, it’s just here. It’s just everything. He can’t even muster a real emotion, good or bad.

And the hardest part is that he looks normal, doesn’t look like anything is wrong. If he had a horribly burned face, or was missing a leg or something, people would understand. Would see that there’s something wrong and feel something, some kind of pity or sympathy or compassion. Or at least just acknowledge it. 

He wants the house to collapse around him, to take him with it in a pile of dust and termites and mold and weak wood. He can smell the fire outside, bonfires and fireworks and grills. It’s Dean’s favorite time of the year. He’s probably at some function in whatever town he’s in, watching the fireworks with a bellyful of hotdogs and beer, his hand down the front of some girl’s daisy dukes.

Sam hopes he is.

Well, he doesn’t really. He honestly hopes Dean’s miserable, just in a really bad way, like he is. That he’s thinking of Sam, right this second. That he’s missing him and wishing he was beside him, wherever he is.

Sam can’t even muster the want for Dean anymore. The love is still there, just as much a part of him as his blood or breathing, but the active emotion, the need of him just won’t show up. Can’t push through all the darkness to find him.

He wonders if he would have come to this anyway, even if he’d stayed with Dad and Dean. If this feeling would have found him no matter where he was, like it’s part of his destiny.

He tries to call up the feel of Dean’s hands on his body, on his hips, the flat of his palm on his stomach. He can’t. No sensation. Not even a tingle.

He focuses on the memory of Dean’s face in profile, the way he looks when he’s driving eighty miles an hour down the highway, the sun warming his skin. He can still picture him exactly and he finds comfort in that. Nothing can take away his memories, not even the darkness.


End file.
